Religion and politics: two subjects a financial adviser should never bring up with a client, right?

Not necessarily anymore. The erosion of personal wealth, along with local and national stories about massive financial fraud, are causing people to re-examine everything from their grocery bills to how they valuate themselves as human beings. And that creates some intense and revealing conversations with the ones who know them as intimately as anyone: their financial advisers.

“Instead of a five- to 10-minute talk about the markets, we’re talking about faith and values, and right and wrong,” said Suzann Brown, a partner with Virchow Krause & Co. Wealth Management in Minneapolis. “The big question is, ‘How did we get here?’ and it’s a much more emotional conversation. And you have to be willing to have the conversation. That’s how we can create calm and peace of mind without being able to fix what’s happening on CNBC.”

Zipped lips

When Dan Langworthy, wealth adviser with Executive Capital in Edina, was in school, he remembers a professor saying that the two subjects you don’t ever want to talk about with clients are politics and religion, because they’re personal and they’re controversial. And while Langworthy doesn’t like to discuss faith or voting records, the conversations he’s having with his clients are more transcendent these days than they’ve ever been before.

“There’s a grieving process when they have a high concentration of their employer’s stock and they realize they’re vulnerable to swings in the market,” said Langworthy, who has clients who have pulled out of the market entirely in recent weeks. “People are scared, so I think there’s a psychological perspective that needs to come into play. What’s really important in your life? How are you going to change your life going forward? I think that’s where you’re hearing advisers talking about the religious part.”

Besides fear and grief, the intense introspection that follows a dramatic drop in personal wealth can unearth a sense of guilt in some people, said Kathy Kuehl, a principal with Minneapolis wealth-management firm Lowry Hill. Kuehl recently had a meeting with a client who had given some money to her grandchildren and then watched as their accounts shriveled because of the recent market turmoil.

“She’d given them this money and felt like she hadn’t given them enough of an education to really understand what was happening,” Kuehl said. “She felt so guilty.”

Fraud fallout

While the questions Kuehl has been asking her clients have become more introspective and abstract in the wake of recent financial fraud cases, her clients also are asking some fundamental questions about the role of trust in the adviser-client relationship.

“If you look at everything that’s happened with [disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie] Madoff, people are re-evaluating their relationships with their advisers,” Kuehl said. “Who can I trust? Am I getting good advice? Am I not getting taken? No matter how much money you have, everybody has to be cautious about their adviser relationship.”

That kind of conversation can ultimately lead to a deeper, more intimate relationship, said Brown, who recounted a recent conversation she’d had with a widowed client in her 70s. The woman asked Brown if she was going to be OK, and Brown reassured her that, with some lifestyle adjustments, she would be OK. Brown, who had never talked about spiritual matters with a client, even after 9/11, recommended that the client turn her television off and reflect on the things in her life for which she was grateful.

“That’s when this whole church thing came up,” Brown said. The client told Brown she had just been discussing gratitude at church while making Christmas preparations. “I said, ‘You know, it’s OK to pray about this stuff.’ I wouldn’t have said this to everyone, but I felt comfortable doing it with her. And she said, ‘Yes, that’s where we get our hopefulness.’

“Once we get into this conversation about hopefulness and gratitude, that’s where the spirituality of the conversation takes on a little meaning.”